of the intelligence world.” At last,
the pilgrims discover the Simurgh,

the King of Birds. But this: it is only
they themselves: “I am the mirror set

before your eyes. Within my light,
you see yourself, your own reality.”

*

“[M]isfiled paperwork, inattentive
government employees, mis-

understandings and miscommunications—
just commonplace incompetence.”

The US believed that, unlike others,
this war would be invisible.

*In addition to my own original lines in this poem, I have cited material from a variety of sources. Mixed in with overt references and allusions (e.g. Ibn-al-Arabi, Dick Cheney) are direct quotes from Ed Snowden, George Herbert, Mahmoud Darwish, John Milton, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Additional material was sourced from Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, Reza Aslan’s No God But God, Seymour Hersh’s Chain of Command, James Hillman’s The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, and Chris Mackey and Gregg Miller’s The Interrogators.

R.M. Haines is a writer from southwestern Ohio. His poems have appeared in DIALOGIST, Glass, Kenyon Review Online, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, West Branch, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Indiana, where he works as an adjunct instructor in English and creative writing. More information can be found at rmhaines.com.